Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Swedish Preference For OOXML Becomes Controversial

Sweden, which opted for Microsoft’s Open Office XML document (OOXML) as an international standard, is in the midst of a new controversy.

Microsoft has been accused of luring the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) by promising incentives to get Sweden’s vote in its favour.

Right now Open Document Format, backed by IBM and Google and Microsoft’s OOXML are in fight to become global document format. While many countries including India and China have supported the open version, certain others have opted for OOXML.

According to news reports, the number of voting members of SIS grew from 9 to 34. Of the 23 new companies that joined, all are Microsoft certified partners voted in favour of OOXML.

Microsoft has been accused of buying votes in order to gain preference over ODF. It is said several of the members, who were not interested in participating in the voting, suddenly joined voting and opted for Microsoft standard and this is the case that has got a lot of media attention.

Computer Sweden said an email sent from Microsoft to its partners stated “Vote Yes to OOXML and we'll make sure that you get extra marketing money for you campaigns”

According to news on OS2world.com Microsoft Sweden’s Business Manager Klas Hammar claims the email was only sent out to a few gold partners and that the wording and fact it was sent out was regrettable.